Be Not Afraid

Readings

Sermon

The character of God said it to the
reluctant Hebrew prophets who were always charged with speaking truth to power.
“Be not afraid.”

Jesus said it to his followers, most of
whom were rightfully terrified of the looming violence of the Roman Empire. “Be not afraid.”

The angels said it to Mary who was poor,
unmarried and informed&mdash;by angels&mdash;that she was going to give birth to&mdash;and
then raise&mdash;the messiah. “Be not afraid.”

They were all terrified with good reason.
And they were all told, “Be not afraid.”

Our fears serve a great purpose. We sense
a threat. Adrenaline rushes through our body, bringing blood to muscles. We can
physically respond with speed and strength.

Our primitive instincts protect us by
saying, “Be afraid! Be very afraid!”

Religious paths can help us cope when we
are afraid. Some lead us toward making justice in the here and now while others
help us cope by cultivating the inner life, believing that through contemplative
practices the spirit is strengthened to face anything that happens in the
material world. There is really only one human fear: the fear that we will be
unable to cope.

There was a story I heard last month
about a woman whose husband lost his job just a month before Christmas. She
spoke through tears describing how different Christmas would be for her family
this year. A couple days ago, she was interviewed again. She said that things
are getting more urgent at home&mdash;bills are piling up and there is no sign of
her husband finding a job right away, but when she was asked about Christmas she
said that her family’s holiday was really good. They learned&mdash;the often talked
about lesson&mdash;that the holiday is not about the many expensive gifts that they
usually have. In the first
interview you could hear that she was afraid of not being able to cope with her
new reality. In the second interview, she sounded like she had somehow found a
new way.

It sounded to me that she was like so
many of us. Her spiritual stability had come to depend on the permanence of
impermanent things. Her material world was shaken and in the midst of the
confusion, there was somehow some acceptance and peace. Perhaps she was
fortunate enough to hear the ‘still, small voice’ and follow it toward renewal.

There is a passionate curiosity right now
about Roosevelt’s presidency and how he led
people through crisis. As we know, Roosevelt
said during the Great Depression, “The only thing we have to fear is fear
itself.” But what we may not hear in his famous sound bites is that he also
said, “Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.”

We must be rigorous in our vision to see
the dark reality for what it is&mdash;there is suffering among us and in the lives
of our neighbors around the world, especially for those who were already
vulnerable when this downturn started. And it is scary. There is a lot that we
cannot control, but we can aspire to respond to this fear in a way that is
creative and life-affirming.

After 9/11 we were afraid and rightfully
so. Our fear was an incredibly powerful force that could have been used to
justify reaching out to each other and to our neighbors around the world in
innovative ways. Instead the powerful force of our fear was used to justify
pre-emptive war. This time, our
fear can be a force for awakening, not for violence.

This is where my religious life is so
important to me. It keeps reminding me that there is another way beyond the knee
jerk reactions and hiding in the bunker. Living a religious life means
continuing to turn toward that still, small voice.

Let
your presence ring out like a bell into the night. If drinking is bitter, change
yourself to wine. And if the earthly no longer knows your name, whisper to the
silent earth: I'm flowing.

To
the flashing water say: I am.

My grandmother once told me
that this was something she liked about the Great Depression years. People could
not afford to go out for entertainment and sometimes they didn’t even have work,
so they were guests in each other’s homes&mdash;sharing stories and
conversation. Because there was
less work to be had, there was more time for hospitality with friends, neighbors
and family.

The lessons of the Great Depression
stayed with my grandmother throughout her life. My family has been in St. Louis for many
generations and when I moved away I would call my grandmother regularly. She was
always terribly uncomfortable with our calls. Not because she didn’t want to
talk with me but because it was a long distance call. It didn’t matter how many
times I described to her what an unlimited long distance calling plan was, she
couldn’t stand that it was costing too much money for me to make a long distance
call. For years, I’d call her anyway and talk as long as I could before she
would inevitably say, “Well, that’s all I have Susan. We should really get off
the phone now.”

But I didn’t know anything
about her saving and sacrificing as I was growing up. I came to learn that she
and my grandfather had nothing when they married in 1942. He went into the Navy
and when he returned they started a business. He poured his life into that food
distributorship and my grandmother poured her life into raising four children.
They saved everything they could and their greatest sense of accomplishment was
that they paid for all four of their children to go through Catholic schools.

They weren’t rich by most
definitions of the word, but as a child I knew we had a safety net in my
grandparents&mdash;whether is was helping us get settled in a new town or just to pay for my summer camp. I
grew up knowing that we were loved and that my grandparents wanted us to thrive
and to not live from scarcity. My grandfather legacy to us all was his saying,
“Do what you love and the money will come.”

They didn’t talk about how
hard it was to save and sacrifice year after year. They made it look easy, but I
was reminded of how intentional they had to be when my grandmother died six
years ago. We were all emptying out her basement. We found a box. It was full of
little strings. The box was neatly labeled: Strings Too Short To
Use.

We are all living in the
wake of that generation’s sacrifice and hard work and we have the opportunity to
be such a generation, but we are not going to get there by the ways we have been
living.

For too long we have
comfortably lived in an
economy that is not healthy&mdash;one that encourages people to spend far more than
they have, encourages people to pull from the planet far more resources than the
earth has to give, encourages us toward a society that does not care for the
most vulnerable among us.

Whether we like it or not, we are living
in a turning point. We can continue living in an economy of short cuts,
exploiting the vulnerable people and the vulnerable earth. Or we can turn. We
can turn toward building a new world&mdash;one that is truly sustainable, one that
calls for each of us to sacrifice for the well being of all. If we don’t all get
there together, ain’t none of us goin’ home.

My grandmother felt that
during the Depression there was strong connection to one another. And
this is, indeed, a lesson we
have to learn. We are such a transient people, often living without the benefit
of a cultural heritage or religious traditions that can teach us how to live
through disorienting experiences. Some people don’t have a sense of self any
larger than their job description. Without multi-generational family, without a
history to revere, without role models, without a sustaining faith then our
fears can destroy us. When we can trust in something larger than ‘self’, then we
can afford to be courageous. We might not know all the answers but we can trust
that others have walked this way before and they are watching, holding, loving.

In the words of Janet
Morley:

and you held me and there were no words and there was no time and you held me and there was only wanting and being held and being filled with
wantingand I was nothing but letting
goand being heldand there were no words and there needed to be no
wordsand there was no terror only
stillnessand I was wanting nothing
andit was fullness and it was like aching
for Godand it was tough and warmth
anddarkness and no time and no words and we
flowed and I flowed and I was not empty and I was given up to the dark and in the darkness I was not
lostand the waiting was like fullness and I
couldhardly hold it and I was held and you were dark and warm and without time
and without words and you held
me

Visiting yet another cheery time in
history, we go to the black plague! During the years of the black plague and
peasant revolts the predominant theology of the time was one that said: ‘those
people who are suffering and dying are being punished by God for their sins’.

Julian of Norwich told a different story.
As a hermit and a mystic, she saw visions and people listened. She said that God
was both male and female, that God’s message was one of pure love for all and
that God’s language to send such a message was the language of love. She knew
full well the challenges people faced and yet she dared to say: All shall be
well.

None of us know how this will play out&mdash;on a global scale, in our country and in our individual family’s life. We don’t
yet know if all shall be well. But we do know that we have the opportunity to do
more than stand on the sidelines watching our bottom line. We have been given
the gift&mdash;whether we want it or not&mdash;to live in times when we are charged with
nothing less than to recreate the world.

What we can know is that we are living in
a special moment in history, but we are not alone. Every couple generations, the
cycle turns. This is a turning point. This is our turning point. Let us be
counted among those who stand and turn.

So be it.

Amen.

Come into the spirit of meditation and
prayer.

Imagine…you are afraid and in the same
breath, you are safe. In your darkest valley of
fear…Be and be not afraid to reach for your
loved ones&mdash;the living and the dead. Be and be not afraid to reach for god&mdash;creating, sustaining, redeeming. Be not afraid to reach for sacred stories
that show us the way&mdash;the histories, the mythologies, the poems and the songs. Be and be not afraid to reach&mdash;for the
still, small voice, whispering within all.